So this happened...

On September 25, 2017 Patrol Sgt. Christopher Morrow of the Lexington Police Department was arrested after being indicted for Rape in the 1st degree by the Fayette County Grand Jury.

Departmental policy prohibits me from discussing much about this matter, although technically it's not a Lexington PD case as the primary investigation was done by the Kentucky State Police.  However, the purpose of this blog was to be fearless in expressing my opinions about police issues and criminal matters in Central KY.  I've known that this matter was brewing for weeks.  Of course it would break into the public consciousness the day after I started this blog. There's nothing like getting your first gut- check of your integrity before you've even figured out exactly how all of the website buttons work.

So, with all of that in mind, I will offer the following three observations, none of which address any of the details of this case that are not yet a matter of public record.  As various facts of this case are entered into the public record through the local media I may address some of them.

1.  If the old saying about a good prosecutor being able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich is generally true, so is the reverse.  A good prosecutor (or even a mediocre one) can get a grand jury to fail to indict a case if they want the matter to go away.  In my experience, any adult sexual assault case that has even a whiff of a potential loss around it gets spiked.

It is significantly harder to get a conviction in an adult sexual assault case than a child sexual assault case for many reasons, but one of the primary reasons is that (generally speaking) there are no lesser included offenses in an adult sexual assault as there are in most child sexual assaults.  A jury has to either unanimously agree that the sexual encounter was forcible in nature or the suspect can't be found guilty of anything.

In the case of a sexual assault involving a child, force is either not an issue because it's not an element of the offense or there are lesser offenses, that are still felonies, based on the age of the child victim that a jury can "compromise" on when deliberating if one or more of them don't believe that the suspect used force to accomplish the assault. Getting a conviction for a lesser statutory offense because one juror refused to believe that the suspect physically forced the victim to have sex may not be perfect justice, but a win is a win and most felony level child sex offenses still carry heavy incarceration penalties and the lifetime registration as a sex offender for those convicted of them. It's "worth it" to roll the dice with a jury in those cases, specifically weaker cases, because the prosecutor can still expect to get a win overall.

The same is true for most criminal offenses, such as assault and even homicide.  Those offenses have degrees of seriousness that a jury can debate and come to a consensus on.  The way that adult sexual assault statutes are written, particularly in Kentucky and especially the  "1st degree" offenses that have force or the threat of force as an element that the jury must agree occurred in order to convict, means that there's either no lesser offense to be had (which means the defendant will be acquitted) or the jury may only consider misdemeanor offenses such as Physical Harassment that are so far removed from the seriousness of the charged offense as to count as losses even if the jury agrees to convict for them. 

Adult sexual assault cases, because of the "all or nothing" nature of the statutes governing them, are then one of the biggest gambles for a prosecutor to take to a jury trial in the absence of an air- tight case.  Prosecutors, quite simply, hate to lose.  The suspect also has no incentive to plead guilty to them because the prosecution doesn't have anything to offer him.  It's not like a rape case involving a child victim where the facts of the case might warrant 20 to life on a 1st degree conviction, but everyone (including the victim) will accept a plea to a 2nd or even 3rd degree charge that carries 10- 20 or even just 1- 5 years.

"Bad" adult sexual assault cases go away, whether it's because there's a lack of physical evidence or lack of credibility on the part of the victim or for any other semi- plausible reason to keep the prosecution from having to face the possibility of a hit to their win percentage.  Bad adult sexual assault cases don't get indicted.

This case did.

2. Sgt. Morrow deserves and will get the same due process as all citizens do under our system of justice.  Reading through the comment sections of various local media sources, there are plenty of idiotic people out there willing to spout off that he somehow deserves more punishment or less due process because of the nature of his employment.  That's simply stupid.  He's an American citizen.  He gets due process.  Oh, and good luck finding anybody with a brain in their head who would be willing to be a cop if somehow cops' due process rights were curtailed.

There are also numerous complaints that he remained suspended with pay while the investigation was ongoing.  Now that he has been charged criminally, his status has been changed to suspended without pay.  The idea is that he should have been suspended without pay while under investigation and any number of hobgoblins are invoked by the jealous and ignorant to bitch about this, the two most prominent being the "Blue Wall" and public employee unions.

The portion of KRS governing the discipline of police officers, commonly called the Peace Officers Bill of Rights or KRS 15.520, actually allows for police officers to be suspended without pay during investigations.  Specifically, it states that employers can suspend the officer without pay, but that if the officer is cleared, then he or she is entitled to all of their back pay that accumulated while they were suspended.  The collective bargaining agreement that covers Lexington police officers and sergeants does not supersede state law on this point.  It can't.

That said, it has been the past pattern and practice for the Lexington police department when investigating an officer accused of misconduct so serious that it requires suspension from normal duty to leave the officer on paid status unless or until he or she is criminally charged.  The ugly reality is that complaints against police officers are simply part of the job.

Fortunately most complaints are unfounded.  Because of that, a blanket policy that suspended officers without pay for any investigation would cause undue hardship on the officer and his or her family.  Far better to have a line of demarcation between a complaint that ends up being unfounded or only a violation of internal policy versus a complaint that turns out to have a criminal component.

This brings us to my third and final comment on this situation:

3. Anyone who thinks that Sgt. Morrow is going to get protection from the alleged "Blue Wall" has never met Sgt. Morrow.  To say that as a supervisor, his relationships with his coworkers are strained is an understatement on par with saying that there were occasional pockets of violence and unrest around the world in between 1938 and 1945. The man is simply not well- liked by his co- workers and very few, if any, of his Lexington PD co- workers are going to give him the benefit of the doubt.  In fact, having the case investigated by KSP is just about the biggest favor anyone could have done him because he was investigated by people who didn't know him instead of people who have had the misfortune of knowing him all too well.